“Local doctor to ride in Pelotonia in memory of former employee”

Hope everyone had a great Pelotonia weekend!

Dr. Brautigan of Orthopaedic Associates of Zanesville is an expert in pain that affects the shoulder and how to treat it.

On September 13, Dr. Brautigan will conduct a seminar titled “Shoulder Pain.  Modern Solutions to a Common Problem.”

The seminar will be held at 5:30 p.m. at the Genesis Healthplex Conference Center, located at 2800 Maple Avenue in Zanesville, Ohio. The event is free and open to the community.

To register for the event, please call the Genesis Healthcare Systems NurseLine at 740-455-4949 or 1-800-948-4949.

An avid sports fan and weight lifter, Dr. Finck has covered multiple sporting events for several central Ohio high schools, the Ohio Junior Blue Jackets, the Cincinnati Bearcats, and the Cincinnati Bengals. He also has provided annual sports physicals for Columbus-area and Cincinnati-area athletes. In 2005, he received the Community Service Medallion Award honoring his volunteer time with high school athletes.

Please join us in welcoming him to Orthopaedic Associates of Zanesville.

Rita was a much-loved employee at Orthopaedic Associates of Zanesville. She served as the practice’s bookkeeper since 1981 and sadly lost her battle with cancer in January 2010.

For those wishing to support Dr. Brautigan’s ride, please visit: https://www.pelotonia.org/ride/donate.jsp?MemberID=76204

Packing boxes, moving heavy furniture, emptying overhead cabinets – all come with some risk for injury, especially to your back. Back pain is one of the most common reasons for Americans visiting their doctors. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 21.9 million people visited their physician for back pain in 2007 and 4.8 million went to the emergency room for such back ailments.

To avoid heavy-lifting injuries, keep the following tips in mind:
• It is important to separate your feet, shoulder-width apart and bend at the knees while tightening the stomach muscles.
• Try and get help. Ask a friend to help or leave the job to the professionals who are trained to lift properly.
• Do not move a very large or awkwardly shaped item yourself, even if you think it is light enough. You could limit your visual scope or strain your neck or back trying to balance it.
• Use several smaller boxes for heavier items and don’t stack boxes above shoulder level when carrying.
• When moving boxes or any object, remove all obstacles – especially smaller throw rugs – from the walkways and stairways and keep the floor and stairs dry to avoid slipping.

Orthopaedic Associates of Zanesville bone and joint experts wish you a successful move!

It includes several interactive tools to engage the public and encourage you to learn about the ways in which a PT can help restore and improve motion in your life. New features include Ask-A-PT, a Motion Quiz, and a Twitter Feed.

As a bone and joint expert, Dr. Allen reminds to prevent arthritis by:
• Protecting your knees
• Diversifying your workout
• Finding the right athletic shoes

For those who already suffer from arthritis, a study presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons shows total knee replacement can successfully relieve pain and improve function in patients with advanced knee arthritis.

If pain persists after rest and ice, physical therapists may use ultrasound or other modalities to help heal the damage of an injury. Additionally, they may prescribe flexibility and strengthening exercises to allow you to return to the activity. In some cases, a wrist splint or brace may be recommended.

Do you have questions about tennis elbow? Post them here for the Orthopaedic Associates of Zanesville to provide answers.

According to About.com, here are some helpful tips:

1. One of the most important things in stroke technique when it comes to freestyle and avoiding shoulder injuries is to bend your elbows underwater during the pull. This is proper form and will keep you from putting your shoulder in an awkward position that leads to a rotator cuff problem.

2. When you’ve had some time away from swimming and are resuming training, always ease back into it. If, for example, you train with weights and had a 3-month layoff, you wouldn’t try to max out on your bench press the first day back. The same applies to swimming. Instead of jumping back in and resuming the 5,000 meters you were doing before your break, start with something very light, like 1000 the first day, 1200 the next, etc.

3. Avoid the use of pull buoys and paddles. Although it is tempting, buoys merely give you a false sense of floatation and put unnecessary tension on your joints, especially your shoulders. Although there are paddles designed not to cause shoulder problems, most of the paddles out there are not needed in training, and will cause shoulder problems if you give it enough time.

4. Swimming only freestyle at all of your workouts may seem like a good idea if you are training for a triathlon, but you will gain more from cross training with other strokes. And most importantly, excess in any one stroke leads to a higher probability of an “overuse” injury.

5. If you breath to only one side, you will develop the muscles more on one side than the other, and this could cause a breakdown and a shoulder problem. Incorporate bilateral breathing into your workouts to avoid this. If it is extremely awkward at first, start with just breathing bilaterally in warm-up and warm-down, and slowly add it into the rest of your workouts as it becomes more comfortable.

Tell us, southeast Ohio, where’s your favorite place to swim?